Software Alternatives & Reviews

Spotlight VS Alfred

Compare Spotlight VS Alfred and see what are their differences

Spotlight logo Spotlight

With Spotlight, you can find apps, documents, and other files on your Mac. And with Spotlight Suggestions, you can also get news, sports, movies, weather, and more.

Alfred logo Alfred

Alfred is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.
  • Spotlight Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-01
  • Alfred Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-19

Spotlight videos

Spotlight - Movie Review

More videos:

  • Review - Spotlight Official Movie Review
  • Review - How Spotlight Dramatizes Good Journalism

Alfred videos

Alfred for Mac [Tutorial] Basics

More videos:

  • Review - Alfred app review is Alfred worth your time?
  • Review - Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course [Method Guide + Review]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Spotlight and Alfred)
Productivity
13 13%
87% 87
App Launcher
14 14%
86% 86
Mac
5 5%
95% 95
Music
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Spotlight and Alfred

Spotlight Reviews

Looking For Spotlight for Windows 10? Here Are Five Alternatives
However, Spotlight comes inbuilt with MacOS and I do really miss it on my Windows laptop. But, the problem is Windows works with NTFS and indexing on Apple File System (APFS) is far better. So it’s not possible to get a perfect replacement for Spotlight. But that doesn’t stop me and in the scout to get Spotlight for Windows 10, I found out some solid alternatives apps.
Source: techwiser.com

Alfred Reviews

7 Best Alfred Alternatives To Maximize Your Productivity
While Alfred is a great app, it works solely for macOS. If you get a new computer that doesn’t run on macOS, you won’t be able to use Alfred. There are many other options available that work on other operating systems.
Source: blaze.today
4 Best Spotlight Alternatives to Increase Your Mac’s Functionality
Raycast is a free application launcher for Mac. If you’re overwhelmed with Alfred and don’t want to spend on its powerpack to unlock all its features, Raycast is the best alternative to Spotlight and Alfred—albeit with a limited feature set—you must check out.
Source: techpp.com
6 Best Alfred App Alternatives for Windows to Be More Productive
Alfred app is like the swiss army knife for the macOS ecosystem. But what about Windows? Well, there is Windows Search but it’s not good enough. There are, however, a few Windows apps that can help ease your day-to-day workflows. Let’s see if we can replace Alfred on Windows using a combination of apps. Presenting some Alfred alternatives for Windows users.
Source: techwiser.com
Best Text Expander apps for MacOS
Earlier on I had heard a lot about Alfred, an award-winning Text expander app for the Mac. I tried it for a couple of days and I must say it does deserve the attention it is getting. Before we begin let me clear this up, the Alfred offers a ton of nontext expander features and yet it manages to deliver on its promise. With the Alfred, Mac users can search and browse...
Source: techwiser.com
What's a good alternative to Textexpander for Mac?
14Alfred 3View ProductRogin FarrerDesign Systems Engineer @Wayfair · Written 3y agoI used to use aText and Dash, and Alfred replaced both for me. The snippets have gotten a lot smarter over time, with support for smart variables, like date, time and cursor.🙏 helpful 2CommentsShare

Social recommendations and mentions

Alfred might be a bit more popular than Spotlight. We know about 5 links to it since March 2021 and only 5 links to Spotlight. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Spotlight mentions (5)

  • Just bought my first Mac/Apple device (Macbook Air M2)
    I want to add another tip: learn to use Spotlight Search to launch apps, search for files or make google queries. To do so, type COMMAND + SPACEBAR. Down the road, once you get comfortable with Spotlight Search, you can replace it with alternative apps like Alfred or Raycast. Using the keyboard to launch apps and open files, from anywhere, takes macOS to another level of mind-meld. Highly recommend. Source: about 1 year ago
  • First time at a Mac/Google shop - teach me your ways
    Spotlight Search - The equivalent of searching in the start menu on a PC, but it actually works. Source: over 1 year ago
  • macOS using 7 cores and 19 gigs of ram to perform subtraction
    It seems they are using it as intended. Apple lists what op does as a supported usecase.. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/spotlight-mchlp1008/mac. Source: over 2 years ago
  • App disappeared on Mac
    Hi there, sorry to hear that. It's possible that the app has disappeared from the dock after updating to the latest stable version that was released today (v3.8.0) but should still be in the list of apps that you have installed or discoverable via Spotlight. If it's still not there, please let us know. You should be able to install it from the downloads page and it should retain your preferences, but create a... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • The right way to use Finder?
    One other thing I forgot to mention is Spotlight. As long as you know the name of file or folder (or other details) you can find it quickly with Spotlight. Just click the magnifying glass in the menu bar, or press CMD + Space. Source: almost 3 years ago

Alfred mentions (5)

  • Keyboard tricks from a macOS app dev
    Alfred (https://alfredapp.com) has a snippet manager (and a _whole_ lot more kbd goodies). - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Need help switching from Windows to Mac
    I assume you mean Windows + R, right? Use alfredapp.com or spotlight. Alfred can do: Find apps & files. Source: over 1 year ago
  • .app vs .com?
    Like spectacleapp.com or alfredapp.com for example. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Here's my Alfred Workflow (Mac spotlight replacement) for navigating Perseus quickly
    I'm using Alfredapp.com's Mac Spotlight replacement to do this. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How I qualifed + worked as a doctor while running a business + maintaining a social life and (most of) my sanity: Key principles
    Once you've got your mac set up, Alfred is essential. I've got a full list of app recommendations here but don't get bogged down in it, just set and forget. Source: about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Spotlight and Alfred, you can also consider the following products

Raycast - Fastest way to control Jira, GitHub and other web apps

Keypirinha - A lightning fast and flexible keystroke launcher for Windows. No installation required (portable).

eesel - The new tab for work

Listary - Listary is a revolutionary search utility for Windows

Slapdash - Fastest way to work across your cloud apps ⚡️

Wox - An effective launcher for windows. A full-featured launcher, access programs and web contents as you type. Be more productive ever since. Wox is free for use and open-sourced at Github, Try it now! Download .